Fashion Designer Liz Lange My Cancer Secret

by Laura Shipp

Fashion designer Liz Lange is
the mother of maternity chic.
In the late 1990s, Liz single-handedly
revolutionized maternity
fashion – transforming cutesy ruffles,
big bows, and frumpy frocks into stylish
and flattering, form-fitting ensembles
that aimed to accentuate the curves of
pregnancy, rather than hide them.

In 2001, Liz’s high-end maternity
line had become a huge hit among pregnant
celebrities, and she was on the
verge of becoming a household name,
as she was in talks to design an exclusive
maternity line for Target. To top
it off, she had just given birth to her
second child and was preparing her
first runway show for New York’s
Fashion Week. It would be the very
first maternity line to be showcased
at Bryant Park.

“I was building my business, I had
two young children [two-year-old Gus
and eight-month-old Alice], I was married,
I was doing a million things,” Liz
recalls. “I was in the midst of the best
time in my career. It was beyond my
wildest dreams.”

Then she got a call that threatened to
tear down all that she had been building.
After a routine Pap smear yielded
abnormal results, Liz’s doctor had ordered
a biopsy of her cervix. It was
Columbus Day, and Liz had been out
of town attending a cousin’s wedding.
She returned home to numerous voice-mail
messages from her doctor. “Even
before I called back, I knew it was cancer,”
Liz remembers. “Otherwise, why
would my doctor have been trying
urgently to reach me on a holiday?”

“I am by nature a very optimistic person. I don’t think you can be
an entrepreneur and not be optimistic. That helped me a lot when
I got this diagnosis.”

Liz’s intuition was right. She had
cervical cancer. The next morning,
she was sitting in the office of a gynecological
oncologist discussing what
needed to be done. She underwent a
hysterectomy to eradicate the cancer
in her cervix, followed by chemotherapy
and radiation to further shore up
her odds of beating the disease.

Throughout the ordeal, Liz managed
to keep her diagnosis a secret while
also moving forward with her business,
eventually landing that exclusive deal
with Target. “I told very few people,”
Liz says. “It was just too painful to
talk about.

“From a professional point of view,”
she adds, “I didn’t want anyone to
think I was not well. I didn’t want
having cancer to impede the growth
of my business.”

Though chemo and radiation left her
exhausted, she was able to hide her
cancer easily, partly because the chemo
she was taking did not cause her to lose
her hair. To everyone on the outside,
she looked normal. And she did everything
she could to carry on with her
life (and business) as usual.

Liz spent what little energy she had
on her work, and she admits that compartmentalizing
the cancer made it
easier for her to deal with. However,
Liz is the first to admit the irony of her
situation. “Of course that was very
ironic,” she says. “There I was, being
heralded as the queen of maternity
chic, and I was having a hysterectomy.

“That was painful, emotionally
painful,” she continues. “I had two
children already, but at the age of 35,
I didn’t want the option of having more
children to be taken from me. But
more than anything, as a mother, I was
terrified that I wouldn’t be there for my
children. They were so young and so
vulnerable, and the thought that they
might have to grow up without a mother
was terrifying.”

Fortunately for Liz, her cancer was
found early, and her treatment was successful.
She’s been cancer free for nine
years. And now that she has a national
platform, thanks to her entrepreneurial
perseverance, she’s not keeping quiet
any longer. “I know that there are
women out there who aren’t going to
their doctors regularly for screening,”
Liz says, “and by speaking out about
this, I can maybe save some lives.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

To learn more about Liz
Lange, and find out where to buy her
maternity fashions, visit LizLange.com.

This article was printed from copingmag.com and was originally published in Coping® with Cancer magazine,
March/April
2010.